


decidedly be

by thescyfychannel



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gossip, Kankri gets his nose broken, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Multi, and people are dicks to Damara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 07:10:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14889945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescyfychannel/pseuds/thescyfychannel
Summary: Part of growing up means figuring out who you really want to be, whether you're seven, sixteen, or eighteen.





	decidedly be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GlassesBlu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassesBlu/gifts).



> \- could be humanstuck, their families could be stabdads but that's not the focus
> 
> \- they're jerky and awful but they they're like the neighbourhood kids you're forced to be friends with cause you're all you've got  
> And they grow up and somehow forge their relationship into genuine love and caring and bonds, but only later on in life does this actually manifest.  
> (You can throw in Latula but she's not one of the neighbourhood kids. She's a new development that skims around the groups periphery but is integrated via Mituna)
> 
> \- like a college au or something perhaps?  
> \- y'all can try me with some sorta space au tho i love those
> 
> \- don't make it the focus but feel free to throw in trans headcanons if you can integrate it heheh  
> \- I'm also all for complex relational love with every relationship being pretty different from the others and I wanna hear all about it >:)

Damara is quiet, until she decides not to be. They learn this on the day that Kankri, who loves being right, and has learned that one of the best ways to be right is to talk until he is, lectures Mituna into crying.

Damara was newer, at the time. Her dad knew their dads, or something like that, so her presence went fairly unquestioned. Up until that shout of “HEY.” left her, she’d been a quiet addition to the group.

After she nearly broke Kankri’s nose, that definitely changed.

 

“—I’m sure that if you THOUGHT about what you said for once, then none of this would have ever happened,” Kankri said, with a satisfied sort of feeling as he took in Mituna’s wide eyes, on the verge of welling up with tears. Sure, it sucked when Mituna cried, but sometimes it was the only way to get through to him. “I GUESS I can forgive you, as long as you promise you’ll—”

Whatever it is that Mituna will need to do to make things up at him will never be resolved, as around that time, someone else interrupts.

“HEY.” Kankri looks up from Mituna’s tears to see a small fist, covered in the bruises and scrapes of rough play, coming right for his face.

He falls back over, and it’s his turn to cry, fat tears that mix with the blood already running down his chin. Mituna’s shocked into silence, and Damara, the newest kid in the neighborhood, stands over Kankri, victorious. “Stop being a dick.”

If he wasn’t so busy crying, Kankri would gasp in horror. Instead, he feels a sick kind of betrayal as Mituna mumbles something, turns on a heel, and runs.

Damara seems to think that he’s suffered enough, because she takes a seat next to him and gestures at his face. “Let me look. He said he’s going to get a first aid kit.” That makes much more sense than Mituna suddenly abandoning him, even if, heaven forbid, Damara was _right_ about him being a dick.

All of that vanishes when she touches his nose, and he yelps in pain. “Don’t whine, it’s not broken.”

“It’s _nearly_ broken,” he says, rubbing at his eyes. “Hitting people is—”

“Necessary, when they make their friends cry.”

 

She doesn’t say anything else until Mituna gets back. She doesn’t need to.

  


Mituna is rude, until he decides not to be. In middle school, he’s labeled a class clown, but he was a lovable one, who got out of as much trouble as he got into. He dragged Kankri and Damara into it with him often enough that Kankri’s lectures on the way home after school, cutting through the forest that wrapped around their neighborhood, were probably well warranted.

Mituna was smart for his age, a trait that continued onwards as he grew, a trait that he shared with his younger brother, a trait that shifted him from “class clown” to “if only he’d apply himself”.

After the first time he got rid of some jackass going after Damara, no one cared about it.

 

Shitty choices were part of growing up. Spectacularly shitty ones were reserved for older kids, as Damara quickly learned, and while the _making_ them was fine, it was the fallout that really, really bit deep.

She had decided, freshman year, that high school gossip was an entirely different, far more _vicious_ animal than middle school gossip. It wasn’t like the tight neighborhood circle, where secrets stayed buried as deep as you needed them to be. No one cared that something was private, that something wasn’t their business, just that it was someone else’s, that it was juicy, and that no one else had heard it before.

The circle closed ranks around her, sure, but some days, it wasn’t really enough, and some days, it was almost _worse_ to have people who wouldn’t let her hide, wouldn’t let her be. At least people tended to shut up when she wasn’t alone. Right up until they didn’t.

“What did you say?” Mituna had shot up in high school, and skateboarding had kept him from being a complete twig, but that didn’t mean he should be getting into _fights_. Before she could stop him, though, he’d sized Johnson up, and started in on a litany of complaints about the high school’s star soccer player, beginning with the size of his dick—something Kankri would lecture him for later—and ending with the fact that he was cheating on all three girls he was dating.

People shut up after that, and Mituna seemed more than ready to talk to anyone who didn’t.

 

It helped. Even when not much else did.

  


Kankri is self-centered, until he decides not to be. When college comes, so does executive dysfunction, so does social anxiety, so does Latula. Plans for a three-person apartment rental turn into a four-person one, plans to get his way turn into ways to help balance the chaos of their life, a way for him to step up and _help_ , instead of hurt.

Kankri was selfish, something he grew out of slowly.

After Mituna asked, hesitating, awkward, shy, if he could maybe add someone to his side of their off-shaped little triangle, none of that mattered anymore.

 

College acceptance letters were opened at the same time, apartment hunting began in three different directions, and class schedules were planned out on a blanket in the local park, set up in the one spot that could catch the library’s wifi.

The first week of classes goes by hella fast, gen eds and overlapping courses for majors carefully rationed out: one class together a semester is the commitment, and everyone holds to it.

Then Latula appears, and the effect hits hard. She’s gorgeous, hilarious, funny, kind. She tries too hard, laughs too loud, smiles when the three of of them are sure she’s sad, and everyone’s head over heels.

And she picks Mituna.

He’s almost scared about it, when he brings it up, like he’s sure their reactions will be bad, or this will turn them against him, and he’s glancing over at Kankri more so than Damara.

She takes it well.

Kankri comes across the room and hugs him, something Kankri never does, and tells him that Latula’s welcome there any time.

 

He doesn’t say more than that. It feels like more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> first time writing this ship! hell yeah. hope you like it!!! happy polyswap everyone!!!!


End file.
